By C. M. Pitman,
New College; President O.U.B.C. 1895.

If we try to examine the causes of success or failure, of a run of good crews or bad crews from one University or the other, it is impossible to overestimate the importance of good organization, good management, and friendly rivalry in the college boat clubs. In the long run, the success or failure of the University Crew depends in no small measure upon the amount of trouble taken and the amount of keenness shown by the various colleges in practising for their different races during the year. It is only by very careful coaching and assiduous practice in his college Torpid and Eight, that a man who has not rowed before going up to the University can ever hope to attain to a place in the University Crew; and it is only by trying to apply his learning to advantage in college races during the year that one who has just gained his blue can hope to be of greater value to the University in the following spring.

Most of the colleges at Oxford have now what is known as an "amalgamated club," which supplies the finances of all the various branches of athletics. That is to say, every undergraduate member of the college pays a fixed subscription to the amalgamated club fund, and the money thus collected is allotted proportionately to the different college clubs. The money thus allotted, with the addition in some cases of small sums received as entrance fees for college races, forms the income of the college boat club; and out of this income is paid a capitation fee to the University Boat Club, which varies according to the number of undergraduates on the college books, the rest of the money being devoted to providing boats, oars, etc.—the ordinary expenses, in fact, for carrying on the college boat club.

A freshman, when he first comes up to Oxford, has, as a rule, made up his mind to which particular branch of athletics he intends to devote himself. If he intends to play football, and does not happen to have come up with a great reputation from his public school, he finds it somewhat hard at first, however good he may be, to make himself known; but if he makes up his mind to row, he finds everything cut and dried for him.

At the beginning of the October Term, a notice is put up for the benefit of freshmen and others, that those desirous of being coached must be at the barge on and after a certain day, at 2.30. The coaching is undertaken by any of the college Eight of the preceding term who are in residence, and any others whom the captain of the boat club may consider qualified. The men are taken out at first in tub-pairs or heavy fours; and grotesque, to say the least of it, are the movements of the average freshmen during the first few days of his rowing career. The majority of men who get into a boat for the first time in their lives seem to imagine that it is necessary to twist their bodies into the most uncomfortable and unnatural it positions, and is hard at first to persuade them that the movements of a really good oar are easy, natural, and even graceful. It is not long, however, as a rule, before a considerable improvement becomes manifest, and, at the end of the first fortnight or so of the term, most of the novices have begun to get a grasp of the first principles of the art.

About the end of the second week of the term the freshmen are picked up into Fours. These crews, which row in heavy tub-boats, practise for about three weeks for a race, which is rowed during the fifth or sixth week of the term. After a day or two of rest, the best men from these Fours are taken out in eights. No one who has not rowed in an eight with a crew composed almost entirely of beginners can imagine the discomfort, I might almost say the agony, of these first two or three rows. One of the chief causes of this is that the boats used on such occasions are usually, from motives of economy, very old ones, the riggers being often twisted and bent by the crabs of former generations, and the boats themselves heavy and inclined to be waterlogged.

During the last day or two of the term, the captain, with a view to making up his Torpids for the next term, generally tries to arrange one or two crews selected from the best of the freshmen and such of the old hands as are available; and justly proud is a freshman if, having got into a boat for the first time at the beginning of the term, he finds himself among the select few for the first Torpid at the end of it.

At the beginning of the Lent Term the energies of the college boat clubs are entirely devoted to the selection and preparation of the crews for the Torpids. The smaller colleges have one crew and the larger ones two, and in some cases three, crews each. No one who has rowed in his college Eight in the races of the previous summer is permitted to row in the Torpid, so the crews are generally composed partly of men who rowed in the Torpid of the preceding year, but who were not quite good enough to get into the Eight, and partly of freshmen; the boats used must be clinker built of five streaks, with a minimum beam measurement of 2 ft. 2 in. measured inside, and with fixed seats.

Although I do not propose here to say anything about the general subject of training, I cannot refrain from making one remark. It is in practising for the Torpids that freshmen generally get their first experience of strict training, and for this reason there is no crew more difficult to train than a Torpid. Most of the men after their first experience of regular work have fine healthy appetites, and, as a rule, eat about twice as much as is good for them, with the result that, even if they escape violent indigestion, they are painfully short-winded, and find the greatest difficulty in rowing a fast stroke. The Torpids train for about three weeks before the races, which take place at the end of the fourth and the fifth weeks in term. They last for six nights, and are bumping races, the boats starting 160 ft. apart. A hundred and sixty feet is a very considerable distance to make up in about three quarters of a mile, and at the head of a division a crew must be about fifteen seconds faster over the course to make certain of a bump.

Of performances in the Torpids that of Brasenose stands by itself. They finished at the head of the river in 1885, and remained there for eleven years, until they were displaced by New College in 1896.

The only other race in the Lent Term is the Clinker Fours. This race is rowed in sliding-seat clinker-built boats, and the crews consist of men who have not rowed in the Trial Eights or in the first division of the Eights in the previous Summer Term. For some occult reason there is never a large entry for the Clinker Fours, although the race affords an excellent opportunity of seeing how the best of the Torpid men row on slides, and should thus be a great help to the captain of a college boat club in making up his Eight for the next term. With so small an entry for the Clinker Fours, most of the college captains devote their time after the Torpids, for the rest of the term, to coaching their men in sliding-seat tubs, the time at the beginning of the Summer Term being so short that it is absolutely necessary to get the men who have been rowing on fixed seats in the Torpids thoroughly accustomed to slides by the end of the Lent Term, and also to have the composition of the next term's Eight as nearly as possible settled.

The start of a boat race is always rather nervous work for the crews, but the start of a bumping race is worse in this respect than any. A spectator who cares to walk down the bank and look at the crews waiting at their posts for the start cannot fail to notice that even the most experienced men look extremely uncomfortable.

The start is managed thus: at the starting-point of each boat a short wooden post is driven firmly into the ground. These posts are exactly 130 ft. apart, and to each is attached a thin rope 60 ft. long with a bung at the end, while by each post a punt is moored. About twenty minutes or a quarter of an hour before the appointed time, the crews start from their barges and paddle gently down to their respective starting-places, where they take up their positions alongside of the punts. Five minutes before the starting-time the first gun is fired as a sort of warning. These guns are fired punctually to the second, and by the first gun the men who are going to start the different crews set their stop-watches. The duty of these "starters" is to keep the crews informed of the exact time, by calling out, "One minute gone," "Two minutes gone," etc. The second gun goes one minute before the start, and as soon as it is fired, the waterman slowly pushes the boat out from the side of the punt by means of a long pole pressed against stroke's rigger, the coxswain holding the bung at arm's-length in his left hand, with the cord taut so as to counteract the pressure of the pole, and "bow" and "two" paddling very gently so as to keep the boat at the very furthest extension of the rope. "Thirty seconds more," calls the starter; "fifteen," "ten," "five," "four," "three," "two," "look out"—Bang! and, except for those who are doomed to be bumped, the worst is over till the next night. Directly a bump is made both the boat which has made the bump and the boat which is bumped draw to one side, and on the next night the boat which has made the bump starts in front of its victim of the preceding evening. The Eights are the last event of the season in which the colleges compete against one another on the river, and the interest and excitement of the college in the doings of its crew generally find their final outlet, in the case of a college which has made five or six bumps or finished head of the river, in a bump supper—an entertainment of a nature peculiar to Oxford and Cambridge, which is, perhaps, better left to the imagination than described in detail.

It is a curious fact that, although the ideal aimed at by each college is the same, different colleges seem to adhere, to a very considerable extent, year after year to the same merits and the same faults. One college gets the reputation of not being able to row a fast-enough stroke; another, of being ready to race a week before the races and of getting worse as the races proceed, and, try as hard as they like, they do not seem to be able to shake off the effect of the reputation of their predecessors. So, again, one college gets the reputation of rowing better in the races than could possibly be expected from their form in practice, or of always improving during the races. The most notable case of late years, perhaps, was the traditional pluck of Brasenose. For eleven years in the Torpids and for three years in the Eights their certain downfall was predicted, but year after year, sometimes by the skin of their teeth and sometimes with ease, they managed to get home. The best performances in the Eights, as a matter of mere paper record, are those of Trinity and Magdalen, who have each rowed head of the river for four years in succession, the former in 1861, 1862, 1863, and 1864, and the latter in 1892, 1893, 1894, and 1895. Magdalen can also boast of not having finished lower than third in the Eights for some fifteen years. Brasenose have finished head of the river fourteen times since the races were started in 1836; University nine times, and Magdalen seven times. The best performance in any one year is that of New College in the season 1895-96, when they completely swept the board, being head of the river in Eights and Torpids, and winning the University Fours, Pairs, and Sculls. The only other college race besides those I have described is the Fours. This race is rowed in coxswainless racing-ships during the fourth week of the October Term. It is a "time" race, the crews, which row two in a heat, starting eighty yards apart, the finishing-posts being, of course, divided by the same distance. A time race is a very unsatisfactory affair compared with an ordinary "breast" race, but it is rendered necessary by the narrow winding river, for there is not room between Iffley and Oxford for two boats to row abreast. Oxford College crews, undoubtedly excellent though they often are, have been singularly unsuccessful at Henley. The Grand Challenge Cup has only been won by a college crew from Oxford twice within the memory of the present generation (i.e. by Exeter, in 1882, and by New College in the present year). Wadham, it is true, won it in almost prehistoric times (1849), and the tradition is handed down that they took the light blue in their colours from those of the crew which they defeated—a tradition which I need hardly say the members of the sister University always meet with a most emphatic denial.

It may, perhaps, seem that so far I have described college rowing as if its organization were so perfect that there is little or no difficulty in managing a college boat club successfully. This is by no means the case. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, even though it be merely that of the captaincy of a college boat club.

In the first place, it is not always as easy as might be imagined to get men to row. Men who cannot be induced to row when they come up to the University may be divided into two classes—those who refuse because they do not wish to take up any branch of athletics, and those who will not row because they wish to do something else. The former class (i.e. those of them who, after a moderate amount of persuasion, will not come down to the river) are not, as a rule, worth bothering about. They are generally weak, soft creatures, whose highest ambition is to walk overdressed about the "High," and, if possible, to be considered "horsey" without riding—the class, in fact, generally known as "bloods." Or else they belong to that worthy class of beings who come up to the University to read and only to read, and imagine that it is therefore impossible for them to row. The "blood" is, or should be, beneath the contempt of the rowing authorities, and the "bookworm" is generally impervious to argument, in spite of the fact that he would be able to read much harder if he took regular exercise.

With regard, however, to those men who refuse to row because they want to go in for something else, a little diplomacy and a little personal trouble on the part of the college captain, such as coaching men at odd hours, once or twice a week, when it suits their convenience, will often work wonders. Instances of this may be seen in the fact that many colleges have of late years been materially assisted by a sturdy football player in the Torpid or Eight, and in the fact that Rugby football blues have rowed in the University Eight during the last three years. Another great difficulty which the captains of the smaller college boat clubs have to face is that of procuring good boats with very limited finances. The usual practice is to save up money for several years to buy a new eight, and to continue to row in her long after she has become practically useless, and, indeed, positively incompatible with good rowing. This is a difficulty which can to a great extent be got over by getting second-hand boats. These can be bought for about half price when they have only been used one or two seasons by the University, or by one of the larger (and therefore richer) college boat clubs, which can afford to get a new boat as often as they want one. By this means a college boat club, however poor, can always have a boat which, if not quite new, is at least comparatively modern, instead of being a water-logged hulk some eight or ten years old, such as one often sees wriggling along at the tail end of the Eights.

Yet another obstacle is there which it is not easy to overcome. It is often almost impossible to find a trustworthy coach. There is nearly always some one in residence who is considered capable of looking after the college Eight, but the ignorance of college coaches is often only too manifest from the arrant nonsense they may be heard shouting on the bank. There is only one remedy I can suggest. Let the college captain secure some member of the University Crew, or any one else who knows what he is talking about, to take the crew for a couple of days, and make the College coach accompany him. He will thus learn something of the rowing of the crew, and you will hear him the next day pointing out the real faults to which his attention has thus been called.

In conclusion, I must add that, keen though the rivalry between the various colleges always is, it is a rivalry which, by the encouragement it gives to rowing, confers good and good only upon the interests of the O.U.B.C., and never degenerates into a jealousy which might be prejudicial to the success of the University as a whole. The college captains elect as president of the O.U.B.C. the man whom they consider to be best fitted for the post, to whatever college he may belong, for they know that the president will select his crew absolutely impartially, will never think of unjustly preferring men who belong to his own college, but will always do his best to serve the interests of the University.[13]